NME Festival blog: Idles discuss their upcoming support slot with Foo Fighters in London

Bristol punk band Idles have lifted the lid on their plans to support Foo Fighters at the O2 Arena in London on September 19.

Speaking to NME backstage at Bestival, singer Joe Talbot said: “They had a shortlist of five to 10 bands, I think, and apparently… they pick the bands themselves, they had the shortlist. We found that out and we thought to get ahead of the bunch, we’d make a puzzle – like a jigsaw puzzle – with a photo of our bassist on it. In his pants. It just said: “Pick Idles.”

Talbot added: “I just built the box and wrote, ‘If you build it they will come” on it. And they fucking did.”

The singer also talked politics, harking back to the London riots. “Violence wakes people up,” he said, drawing a line from the protests that took places in London in 2011 to the recent surprise youth vote that saw Theresa May lose her majority.

He told us: “That vote was magic. That young people turning it around and making me excited again. Genuinely excited. Not just Corbyn and that iconography but about masses of young people thinking pragmatically about their future. There’s only so long these fucking Brexiteers are going to last. They’re all gonna die out and we’re gonna live with the consequences.”

Talbot later praised the current crop of grime stars and compared Idles to Sleaford Mods.

“No-one’s gambling any more for exciting new stuff. It took I don’t know how many albums for Sleaford Mods to get a record deal and they were fucking amazing from the start… [We’re] not marketable yet but [we] will be. Old men shouting at cunts will be marketable at some point, but just not yet.”